What Could Have Been
by readwritereview20
Summary: Eric returns to Chicago five years after the events of Allegiant. (one-shot)


**New one-shot that I wrote yesterday. I hope you guys like it, leave me a review if you have a moment and let me know what you think!**

 **I don't own Eric, the Divergent series, or any of Veronica's other characters.**

Eric fought to keep his head down as he trudged through the snow filled streets, partially because he had no desire to be recognized and partially because every time he had to look up to get his bearings the frigid air slapped him in the face. He was thankful for his beard because it was protecting the lower part of his face from the chill and the onslaught of snowflakes that would sting his exposed skin.

He still wasn't sure why he had decide to comeback. It had been five years since he left, or more accurately, since he was banished. Everything was different now, though. The city he had called home and the faction system were long gone, this place was just Chicago now.

Gerrard, the man at The Bureau of Genetic Welfare who had helped relocate him when he left, had always said that he should consider himself lucky that he had only been kicked out of the city. All of the other surviving Dauntless leaders, Jeanine, and anyone else high ranking in Erudite or Dauntless had been executed. His life had only been spared because of Lily…

 _Lily had transferred to Dauntless from Amity the year after his initiation. It was his first year as a trainer and he had just been appointed a leader, so she had been his first real challenge. She was sarcastic and obstinate. She spoke her mind and wasn't afraid to tell him when he was being a moron. She was just so infuriating; it had filled him with the desire to break her spirit. He had been abnormally hard on her, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her break._

 _By the time initiation ended they absolutely despised each other. Needless to say, when the mutual hatred turned into sexual tension the only ones who were surprised were Eric and Lily._

 _Despite being Dauntless now, Lily was still a bit of a bleeding heart. Right after initiation she had started working in the infirmary and she had loved it there ever since. When things started getting serious between them he had considered telling her what he had gotten himself involved in with Jeanine, but he knew that she wouldn't like it. She would have either walked out of his life and gone back to hating him or she would have gotten in the way._

 _By the time the attack on Abnegation finally happened they had been together for nine months, and he knew that losing her wasn't an option. Disappointing Jeanine definitely wasn't an option either, though, so in what was most definitely not one of his finest moments, he had come up with a plan._

 _His alarm clock started going off at four a.m. the morning after initiation ended. He took a deep breath and rolled over to turn off the alarm clock, before silently pulling open the drawer in his bedside table._

 _"What's going on?" Lily murmured from the other side of the bed, still half asleep._

 _He rolled over and gave her a reassuring smile, "Everything's fine, go back to sleep."_

 _She knotted her fingers in the black undershirt he had worn to bed and pulled him to her, her lips crashing into his. "I thought you had today off," She noted when they finally broke apart._

 _"Something came up," He replied with a small noncommittal shrug. He stared down at her for a moment before readjusting slightly so that his hand was free in case he had to move fast. "Do you trust me?"_

 _The serene look on her face slowly disappeared, "Why? What's going on, Eric?"_

 _He sighed and rolled his eyes, "Nothing, just answer the question."_

 _She smirked up at him for a moment before giving him a small playful shrug, "Sometimes."_

 _He smirked back at her for a moment before bringing his lips back to hers. He slid his hand down her right arm until his fingers could interlock around her wrist. He rolled himself on top of her and moved his other hand to her left wrist. He pulled away and rested his forehead against hers, "I promise this is for your own good, Lil."_

 _"What?" She asked but before she could react Eric had her arms pinned above her head and was pulling a pair of cuffs out from under his pillow. He clapped one side of the cuffs on her right wrist before feeding them around one of the columns in the headboard and locking the other side around her left wrist. "Eric, what the hell?!"_

 _He sat up slowly, "You can kill me for doing this when I get back. I'll be back as soon as I can but it's probably going to be a few hours. Stay here."_

 _"You aren't exactly giving me much of a choice," She growled, pulling on the cuffs. "What's gotten into you, Eric?"_

 _He pulled on a pair of black pants, a t-shirt, and his jacket before sitting on the foot of the bed next to her legs to pull his boots on. She reached out and jabbed him in the ribs with her foot, "Eric! Answer me!"_

 _"Just trust me, okay?" He replied as he stood back up and grabbed his gun from their dresser._

 _She growled again, "Just talk to me, what's going on?"_

 _He didn't answer her, he just walked to her side of the bed and kissed her forehead before walking out of the apartment, making sure the door was locked behind him. He couldn't have stopped them from injecting her with the simulation without drawing unneeded attention to her, so his best bet was to lock her in the apartment and hope that it kept her there when the simulation started._

 _He had gone downstairs to meet the rest of the leaders and the day had gone as planned, until they got to Abnegation. He was walking around monitoring the soldiers when he saw Four. He had just stopped him, this might be his chance to finally remove his longtime rival, when he saw her out of the corner of his eye._

 _At first he had tried to tell himself that he was seeing things, but when he looked again, there she was. She was wandering around with the others, but to his absolute horror she was obviously lucid._

 _"She's divergent," He hard himself whisper._

 _He could have sworn that he saw Four's eyes move but he didn't have time to care. He watched as Wanda, one of the other leaders, appeared and held her gun to Lily's head. She motioned for Lily to go into one of the closest houses._

 _"Dammit, Lily," He growled before stepping out of Four's way and letting him continue on his marching._

 _He ran up to the house but chose not to barge in right away, he needed to know what he was walking into. As he approached the door he could hear the two women's voices coming from inside._

 _"… can't imagine he knew though. He wouldn't have been screwing you if he knew you were Divergent trash," Wanda mocked._

 _Eric crept a little closer, he could see in through the door now, just enough to see Lily's face. Her eyes were wide but filled with the same stubbornness he had come to know and loathe during her initiation. "He didn't know, leave him out of this," She replied and Wanda laughed._

 _"Is that why you threw yourself at him? You wanted to distract him so he wouldn't see you for what you are?" Wanda laughed again, "God men are so weak, he should have seen this in you and gotten rid of you a year ago." Wanda shook her head, "I guess I'll clean his mess up." She raised the gun and aimed at Lily's head._

 _Eric couldn't breathe. Wanda would kill her if he didn't stop this, but if he stopped it Wanda would have them both hunted and killed. He heard the safety click off on his co-leader's gun and there was no more time to think. He shoved the door open, aimed, and fired all in one movement._

 _Wanda's body dropped to the floor and Lily turned to look at him in wide eyed terror. They stared at each other for a moment before he recovered the ability to speak. "Why don't you ever listen to me?" He seethed as he made his way over to her._

 _She took a deep breath and stared at the body on the floor for a moment. She didn't take her eyes off of it when she finally spoke, "I was worried about you, I couldn't just lay there." When she finally looked up at him her eyes were red and full of anger. "What is all of this? Why… There are little kids out there getting gunned down, what could possibly be worth this?"_

 _He shook his head, "Abnegation had to be stopped, and so do the Divergent."_

 _Something in her eyes darkened and he knew instantly he had said the wrong thing, "Divergents? Like me, I'm dangerous? Tell me, what the hell makes me so dangerous, Eric?"_

 _He shook his head and looked away from her. "Why didn't you tell me?" He finally asked, changing the subject._

 _"I didn't think it really mattered," She whispered back before shaking her head as she tried to fight back the tears. "And now I'm glad I didn't, who knows what you would have done."_

 _"What I –" He growled before taking several large steps forward and backing her into the wall, "I just killed someone to protect you. I endangered my entire position for you, Lily."_

 _"And what about all of those other people out there? You have no problem killing them!" She growled back, the first tears escaping her green eyes._

 _"I'm not in love with them," He half yelled back in exasperation._

 _She stared at him in shock for a moment. He had never said that before. A small part of her wanted to ignore everything else and just focus on that, but she couldn't. She reached out slowly and pushed back on his chest, "And I thought I loved you, Eric, but apparently that man was a lie."_

 _She shoved past him and he grabbed her wrist to stop her from getting away, "Lily…"_

 _She shook her wrist free, "Don't. Just don't."_

 _She started toward the door and Eric stood there for a moment before turning and grabbing her arm again. "Here," He said quietly as he pushed his gun into her hand. She didn't respond, but she did close her hand around his gun before she slipped out the door._

 _When he went on trial later following the attack on Candor he had expected the decision to be unanimous in favor of executing him. So when the word "exile" had left his rivals mouth he had been intensely confused._

 _"We all wanted you dead," Tori explained boredly, "But two witnesses spoke up for you and your actions during the Abnegation attack." His eyes had found Lily's in the crowd, she held his gaze for a moment before everything went black._

 _When Eric woke up again he found himself in the middle of an open field. He reached up slowly, his hand landing on a large painful knot on the side of his head. He sat up slowly before the sight of a black backpack hanging on a nearby pole caught his eye. It took him a moment to realize where he was, they had left him on the invisible line that surrounded the city._

 _He had grabbed the bag and unzipped it, pleasantly surprised by the amount of rations he had been given. It would only last a day or two but it was better than nothing, which is what he had expected from Four and Tori. In the front pocket he found his gun, the one he had made Lily take during the attack, and he knew that the backpack had been her doing._

He had started walking, no idea where he was going or what he would find, he just knew he had to get moving. Eventually he had been picked up by The Bureau, and after a few days they had decided to relocate him to another city where they had a lot of work for non-divergents, or GDs. He wouldn't have ever come back, but he had been offered a new job in Wisconsin and his trip there would lead him right past Chicago. Well, it might have been an hour or two out of his way, but close enough.

Curiosity had drawn him in. He didn't want to see anyone from his old life, or so he had told himself, he just wanted to walk through the city he had called home for the first eighteen years of his life and see how much it had all changed since he left. Despite what he tried to tell himself, his eyes were drawn to every woman who looked remotely like her.

He was about to get in his truck and keep driving, he was cold and tired of getting pelted with snow, but then he saw her. He had almost just chalked it up to his eyes playing tricks on him because she looked so different. Her wavy red hair was drastically shorter than it had been before and it had been bleached so that it was blonde now. She was wearing a grey jacket and blue jeans, both colors he had never seen her wear before. She walked to a nearby car and pulled her keys out of her purse before popping the trunk open.

He considered walking over to her, or calling her name, but he couldn't seem to move. Before he could change his mind a tall man in a black jacket ran out of a nearby building, a little boy in a green jacket in one arm and several grocery bags in the other. He handed the little boy to Lily and she quickly crawled into the backseat to strap him in while the man put the bags in the trunk. When Lily crawled back out of the car, the man was ready, he nailed her right in the chest with a snowball.

"Matt!" She squealed before reaching down to grab a handful of snow and lobbing it at him. The man smirked at her, closing the distance between them and pulled her into his arms.

Eric had no desire to watch anymore, he turned back to his truck and unlocked the driver's door. He pulled himself up into the cab and started the engine before looking back up. The man was in the car now, but Lily had stopped, her gaze trained on Eric like she was seeing a ghost.

They held each other's gaze for a few moments before he nodded to her. Despite the distance between them he saw her mouth his name breathily. He finally his eyes away from her, glancing at the road before pulling out of his spot. He glanced at her one last time as he drove past, her eyes were wide and they stayed trained on him until he was past her. He looked straight ahead, his eyes focused on the road ahead as he left the city for the last time.


End file.
